The increasing amount of audio and video appliances in such public places as bars, restaurants, diners, and the like has posed a problem of excessive noise that can be bothersome to a majority of guests and detrimental to an effective operation of such public places. Quite often, a guest literally occupies a juke box or a video apparatus and keeps playing the same musical or video selection for a prolonged period of time to the exclusion of the rest of guests. Furthermore, a situation may arise when a selection that is currently being played should be immediately interrupted as a result of exigent circumstances. The above described reasons and many others necessitate the desirability for conveniently modifying an otherwise manually operated juke box or video apparatus so as to provide for a remote control unit to control the volume of sound and to interrupt a currently playing selection. A remote location may be selected in accordance with needs and wishes of a particular person, for example, a bartender or a cashier who is responsible for supervising a public place. In addition, the internal modification of the juke box itself should be held to a minimum or not take place at all.
Typically, a wired remote control for a sound device operates at a remote location to control the volume of sound. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 2,907,217 discloses a wired volume remote system for selecting a channel selection and controlling the volume of sound of a television receiver. A volume control knob is used to control the resistance of a rheostat in the remote system.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,815,994 discloses another wired remote control apparatus for use with a television receiver. Similar to the remote control of U.S. Pat. No. 2,907,217, this apparatus employs a conventional volume control.
None of the above-described remote controls is particularly useful for overcoming the problems associated with the juke box. Particularly, the known wired remote controls cannot interrupt a selection without totally deenergizing the electronic sound device.